Pearl Buck - The Living Reed

“Traitor!” Sasha now screamed at Liang. “Soft — silly — full of love — stupid love! Dog’s filth! I spit on you — I spit on all of you!”

He spat into the dust at their feet and shouldering his knapsack he ran through the open gate.

Liang stooped then and picked up a small sheet of paper from the earth.

“It was this that sent him mad,” he said to his grandparents. “It was this, after he had seen his father buried. Too much — I know that. And why did I — how could I — it is myself I cannot understand.”

Il-han took the bit of paper from his hand and spelled out the words in the light of the stone lantern. It was a cablegram from Paris: ARE YOU LIVING?

He shook his head. “I can make nothing of that,” he said and he gave it back to Liang.

“Come inside the house,” Sunia called.

But Liang did not heed. He sat down on a stone seat and held his head in his hands. Nor did Il-han heed. He went to the gate and peered into the night beyond, the night into which Sasha had plunged himself.

“What is independence?” Il-han inquired but of no one. He paused and then made his own answer. “Independence? It was a happy thought!”

“Come in!” Sunia called again and she went out and taking his hand, she led Il-han into the house.

“Come, my old man,” she said, soothing him. “Come, my dear old man.”

She helped him to his cushion, and Ippun came in with the teapot and lit a candle.

Outside in the garden Liang came slowly to himself. He felt his soul return into his body. He felt the night wind cool and he heard an early cricket call. Sasha would never come back. They had lost Sasha. He had feared it when he saw Sasha’s face as the coffin was lowered into the grave. He knew it when Sasha, sobbing, had elbowed his way through the reverent crowd. He had followed as quickly as he could, but Sasha had reached home first and had snatched Mariko’s cablegram from the gateman’s hand, the message she had sent from Paris. Sasha was waiting at the gate to spring at him in jealous fury, to accuse him, and suddenly they were trying to kill each other!

The crumpled paper had fallen from his hand. He saw it lying there and took it up and smoothed it out, and read it again.

“Are you living?” These were the words. She had sent them in jest perhaps, or perhaps in love. Safe enough, those words she had chosen by accident, perhaps, in a mood of gaiety or loneliness. Then suddenly conviction rose in him like a voice, though he heard no voice.

Are you living?

Living! His uncle was the Living Reed. Even as he lay in his grave people had murmured the words, and some told again the legend of the young bamboo pushing up between the rough stones in the cell from which he had escaped so long ago. From his coffin he could not escape, and the people mourned. But only a few days ago, Liang now remembered, his uncle had reminded him, almost shyly, of his return one night in secret to see his younger brother, and of how he, Liang, then a baby, had seemed to recognize him, although they had never met before.

“You sprang into my arms, you put your hands upon my cheeks, you knew me from some other life—”

He could almost remember the moment itself. And he recalled other times when Yul-chun had talked of the heritage of Korean patriots.

“In the spring,” he could hear his uncle saying, “in the spring the old root of the bamboo sends up its new green shoot. It has always been so and it will be so forever, as long as men are born.”

“… Come into the house,” his grandmother was calling. “Come into the house, Liang, and shut the door!”

He rose and went no further than the door. He stood there, himself again.

“I am going to the city, Grandmother. Grandfather, I must ask my friend to send a message for me — my American friend.”

“What message?” Il-han asked.

“That I am living,” Liang said.

“It is late,” Sunia complained.

“Not too late, Grandmother,” he said, “not while I live.”

And bowing to them he left them to Ippun and went his way alone. In the sky beyond the gate a new young moon held fullness, and beneath the moon there shone a star, the usual, steady star.

IT WAS HIGH NOON at Pusan, on a fine autumn day, two years ago. I had traveled the length and breadth of South Korea, by motorcar, so that I could stop when I liked. The road was often narrow and rough, the bridges over the many brooks, bombed during the war, had not yet been rebuilt, and we rattled over dry stones or splashed through water made shallow by the dry season. I had enjoyed all of it, marveling afresh at the noble beauty of the landscape and treasuring afresh the warm welcoming kindness of the people. Now I was at Pusan, at the southern tip of Korea. It is a port famous in history, but I had not come here for the sake of history. I had come to visit the place where men of the United Nations who died in the Korean war lie buried, each nationality under its own flag. In the cool autumn wind all the flags were flying bravely.

I laid the wreath I had brought at the foot of the memorial monument and I stood for a few minutes of contemplative silence. The scene was matchless. On three sides was the surrounding sea, a sea as blue as the Mediterranean. Behind were the severe gray flanks of the mountains, the town nestled at their feet. The cemetery is as beautiful as a garden, kept meticulously by devoted Koreans. On either side of me stood two young Korean guards in military uniform, silent as I surveyed the scene. My eyes rested on the American flag.

“I would like to walk among the graves of the Americans,” I said. “I knew some of them.”

The guard on my right replied, “Madame, we are very sorry — no Americans are here. All were returned to your country. Only the flag remains.”

I had a feeling of shock. No Americans here? How this must have wounded the Koreans! Before I could express my regret, a tall Korean man in a western business suit approached me. The brilliant sun shone on his silver-gray hair, his handsome intelligent face. He spoke in English.

“Do not be distressed, please. We understand how the families of the brave Americans might feel. It is only natural that they wished to have their sons safely home again. Our country must seem a very remote place in which to die.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “All the same, I believe that if my fellow countrymen had known, had understood, they would have been honored to leave their sons here, among their comrades.”

“Ah yes,” a soft voice put in. “I have been in your country — I know how friendly your people are.”

“My wife,” the tall Korean said.

I turned and met face to face an exquisite woman in Korean dress.

It was the beginning of a friendship and from these two I created the characters of Liang and Mariko. From them also I learned what happened after the ending of my book. I had read, of course, of the events, how the American government had done its best to correct the first misunderstandings. But through my new Korean friends I came to my own comprehension of all that had happened.

“We misunderstood, too,” Liang said one night, a week later, as we lingered over dinner in his house in Seoul. “Koreans were angry and disappointed when the first Americans came. I am sure that your soldiers during the days of the occupation, in those years between 1945 and 1948, must have had many bad experiences. We were not at our best after half a century of ruthless Japanese control.”

“Even the Japanese did some good things,” Mariko reminded him. “Don’t forget your hospital.”

We were sitting on the warm ondul floor around the low table. It was a pleasant room in a delightful house, Korean but modern. Next door was the excellent hospital where Liang worked. He had done graduate work at Johns Hopkins and was a skilled surgeon.